from "PUB 101: Publication of Self in Everyday Life"

Monthly Archives: April 2017

The Shock Waves of False News

A few years ago I was sitting in a café with an old friend casually chatting and catching up on each other’s lives. This friend of mine brought up a recent article she had read online about an actor. She exclaimed that Macaulay Culkin had passed away. My brows furrowed as I shook my head in disbelief. I pulled out my phone and searched the whereabouts of the actor. He was alive and well. That was the first time I had witnessed an individual being tricked by false news right before my eyes. False news can have several negative impacts however it can also have positive ones by proving to be a savvy method to garner attention.

False news has become a growing issue that has escalated with the introduction of the World Wide Web. Information can be spread at lighting speed with a simple click. Once false news has spread across the globe one must undo the tangled web of misinformation and spread the correct news which unfortunately may not reach everyone. People may remain in the dark about many issues. One can investigate such a case found in China where model claims that the internet ruined her career.

Heidi Yeh was told that she would be modeling for a company whose advertisement would only appear in a newspaper. The advertisement featured a family of five posing for a family portrait. The advertisement was for a plastic surgery clinic and it was captioned “the only thing you’ll have to worry about is how to explain it to the kids”. The model states that the children’s faces have been photoshopped. People began to spread the fake story that the man playing the husband in the advertisement found out that his wife had gotten plastic surgery which explains why the kids do not look like them. Heidi Yeh did not foresee herself becoming an internet meme when taking on the job. The advertisement extended to every corner of the internet as people from all over the world began discussing the model claiming she had modified her features. Heidi’s modeling career took a dive as many began to doubt her. She was then only offered small modelling jobs. Heidi Yeh’s case is an unfortunate event; a freighting realization of the consequences of false news. False news has the power to tarnish an image and cause someone’s career to be negatively affected.

Social media platforms as sources of news can have severe negative effects. Fox news tweet about framing the Toronto mosque massacre on an innocent Moroccan Muslim man caused an outburst of racism and self-righteous attitudes from trump supporters claiming “I told you so”. These unfortunate situations lead to witch hunting innocent people. Thousands of North Americans use social media platforms such as Facebook, twitter, and Instagram as a source of news, this can prove to be a negative thing because it allows easy access for the spread of false news.

An infamous involving the spread of false news over social media is the controversy surrounding Hugh Mungus. Rudy Pantoja was being interviewed by a news station until he ran into Zarna Joshi, who happened to be protesting against the police during the time. Joshi approached Pantoja and asked his name. Pantoja responded in a playful manner claiming his name was Hugh Mungus. What was meant to be a simple joke quickly spiraled out of control as Joshi began accusing Pantoja of sexually harassing her. The taped altercation was uploaded by Joshi and a witch hunt began. Pantoja was attacked online, thousands began labelling Pantoja as a misogynist. As the misunderstanding continued to brew Pantoja put a stop to it through an interview. In the interview he explained that calling himself Hugh Mungus was a joke he had made about his weight. Pantoja further explained that he was thanking the police for getting his heroin addicting daughter off the streets. While clearing his name during the interview he asked the audience to donate to a charity called Hope Soldiers that supports women with substance use/and or mental health disorders. Fortunately, in this case justice quickly prevailed. The accusations against Rudy Pantoja were quelled and he gained many supporters.

The team who is known to use false news to their advantage are The Yes Men; a clever duo that work together to dupe greedy corporations exposing their criminal acts against humanity. In the documentary ‘The Yes Men Fix the World’, Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno impersonate top officials from DOW Chemicals and they land themselves a live interview with BBC news. Bichlbaum states on live television that DOW chemicals will clean up India’s toxic Bhopal plant and compensate the victims of the disaster. DOW’s stock quickly declined and they issued a statement explaining that it was false news that they had been impersonated. This tactic shed light on shameful and inhumane acts of big corporations.

The world should question news however this is a problem because the public should not have to be in a constant state of distrust. False news is malicious and it can cause the real news to be ridiculed. In order to expose fake news one should always make sure to check the source. It is also good to check which news site has posted the news because it may be from an unknown news source with zero credibility. If fake news is being spread about a case one should wait until investigations have been made into an allegation. One should also wait for the full story to be officially released to the public before formulating a complete opinion to share on the web. With these steps you can help minimize the circulation of false news.

Tracking my mood was something I was all for since I thought it would be nice to look back and recall the times in my life that I was happy, sad, tired, etc.

I found that I was no good at tracking my mood at all... My patience only lasted for 3 months and even then, it wasn't a consistent habit of mine to log my mood in. Not even downloading the app for me to have an easy access to Mood Panda worked.

Although tracking my mood didn't last very long, I noticed a consistent theme that was playing during my mood logs. During those times that I actually logged something for me to track, I was either really happy or really sad. There were a few times that I had logged myself in a neutral state but majority of the time, I just remembered to put something down the tracker during the times I have emotional highs and lows.

I was glad to see that even though I usually only logged extreme highs and lows, I was still a happy person in general... Or at least for the 3 months that I had inconsistently tracked my mood. I wonder about the times I felt ok. I think that because nothing extreme is going on, I saw no importance on logging how I feel because I was only ok. Looking at the graph, it almost feels like I seem to be quite bipolar when in fact, there are just too many gaps from inconsistent mood tracking and my apparent tendency to ignore the times I was feeling neutral because I was only fine.

Maybe one day I'll actually consider tracking my mood again once I've made an absolute resolution to be as consistent as possible. At least for a set period of time, assuming I've made a goal I want to reach using this mood tracker. For now, let's all call this mood tracking project a not-s0-successful attempt.

Since it’s Thursday, #throwback to Douglas Coupland‘s art exhibition at VAG back in 2014. This exhibition is in my top 5. Let’s reminisce, shall we? Let’s ponder over this Vancourite’s phenomenal work.

PS. If you have not read his first book Generation X, I highly recommend that you do.

Thoughts? questions? What are your favourite pieces from the exhibition? Or favourite book written by him? I want to know, please post below in the comments section!

The semester is almost done, but most of us are still dealing with our final exams. Even though I like studying at home usually, I was looking for some other cozy place to study at. I was checking the best cafes in downtown Vancouver, and I ran into a cafe called The Buzz Cafe and Espresso Bar. The cafe is located inside Vancouver’s oldest retail art gallery called Harrison Galleries. This specific attribute immediately caught my attention and I went there.

The cafe has two floors, full of nice paintings. It has some big tables and big couches which reminded me of Central Perk! If I haven’t mentioned before, I am a huge Friends fan. So, anything that reminds me of Friends makes me happy

It is a great place for group studying as well, it you can get one of the big tables. Other than that, it is a perfect place to chill out, study, or hang out with your friends, just like Central Perk! In the meantime, you can take a look at the gallery as well.

When it comes to food, they have breakfast options. Also, they have sandwiches, wraps, paninis, soups, muffins and croissants. They have gluten free options as well. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried any of them because I was not hungry. But I am thinking of getting Bacon Avocado Grilled Cheese Panini next time!

While I was trying to focus on my readings, I drank a Maple Pumpkin latte which was very tasty. The Buzz Cafe has a quite range of different lattes, mochas and hot chocolates.

If you do not feel like study at home or at the library, you can definitely check this place out. I think a good coffee and the cozy homey atmosphere might help you focus on your readings.

Barcelona is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Whenever I ask someone about the places that they would like to visit in Europe, Barcelona is usually the first of the second answer. Luckily, I had the chance to explore this beautiful and unique city.

Me and my friends, we have found the place to stay from AirBnb. We stayed at a beautiful old-fashioned Spanish style apartment which was near La Rambla, which is the largest main street in Barcelona.

There are tons of things to see and to do in Barcelona, so I would suggest you to have at least 5 days in Barcelona in order to fully explore it. One of my favourite spots in Barcelona was Parc Guell. It is a public park located on Carmel Hill. This park has been designed by the famous architect Gaudi, who is considered to be the architect of the whole city due to his unique style. Although Park Guell is far away from the city center, it is very easy to go to the park by public transportation means. So, I would recommend you to buy a pass to use in Barcelona as it is a big city and the attractions are in different locations.

And of course, one of the main attraction is Sagrada Familia! It is a large Roman Catholic Church designed by Gaudi. The church is very unique and impressive due to Gaudi’s talent and the materials and light techniques that he has used. You have to get in line in order to get a ticket to get inside. In order to avoid the wait list, you can buy your ticket online one day advance, and you can wait much less to get inside. I would definitely suggest you to get inside as Sagrada Familia is a magnificent architectural masterpiece.

Barcelona is a city with a lot to offer, and it has many beautiful places besides the main attractions. That’s why you should explore the city by walking, especially the gothic quartier. When you wonder around the city, you’ll have the chance to explore many beautiful narrow streets and european style architectural pieces.

When it comes to food, there are tons of options in Barcelona. Since we were staying right next to La Rambla, we were having our dinners on one of the restaurants at La Rambla. Personally, I adore spanish food, especially paella!! Paella is a traditional spanish dish made by rice and classic sea food. You should definitely try that! Also, we have explored a public market called Mercado de la Bouqueria.

That is a huge market full of delicious food options. And prices are much cheaper compared to the restaurants. They have fresh juices, fruits, many kinds of street food and classic spanish dishes.

You should not leave Barcelona without enjoying the beautiful beaches! In Barcelona, beaches are the areas where people come together, have some drinks and food and hang around by the nice view. The main beach is called Barceloneta. You can always go there either to sunbathe, have some picnic or just hang out with your friends. I did not have the chance to swim at the beach because the ocean was still very cold. But you can give it a try if you like!

Throughout this semester, I have been using Track your Happiness to track and monitor my mood and happiness. The following is the results that I got in the semester. (You said you were ‘Using Technology.’ What are you using it for?) (How would you describe the primary work that you are doing.) (If you could …

Before coming to Vancouver, I was not really a big fan of sushi. Because in my hometown, there is not an easy access to fresh and delicious sushi ingredients. When I told my friends that I’ll be going to Vancouver everyone told me that they have the best sushi. I was not really sure about that until I actually experienced it. I have visited many different sushi places, I kind of liked some of them and hated most of them… So I can say that I am very picky when it comes to sushi. But I have found the best sushi in Vancouver! Actually, it would be more correct to say in Greater Vancouver area as the place that I have found is in Coquitlam. It is a very small, cute and cozy place that is called Sushi Boss and I can say that they really are the boss when it comes to sushi!

Every ingredient is super fresh and incredibly delicious. Their mis-o-soup is the best! They have a very refined and well selected menu. And I have absolutely loved everything that I ate! I ate most of the sushis that can be seen as classic ones.
I had California Roll, Dynamite Roll and Salmon Avocado Roll. They were all super tasty. I tried some of the special rolls as well and my favourite was the Ninja Roll.
I have also had Crispy Roll and Butterfly Roll.
By the way, they always bring you a salad with their own sauce and gyoza along with it at no extra charge. That is very delicious too and I think that is one of the elements that makes the place special.

I would highly suggest you to visit this place to have a great sushi. Especially, if you are a picky person like me, I can definitely say that you will not regret it. I was rarely eating sushi until I discovered this place. Now, I go eat sushi twice every week!

Last week, I had an exam early in the morning on Monday. Since I had to wake up very early that day, I did not have the chance to have a breakfast. By the way, I should say that I love having breakfast. To me, it is the best part of the day. So, I was checking Google Maps to see where to have a nice breakfast and I ran into Brioche Urban Eatery which seemed to be 3 minutes away! They define their style as “Home-style Italian dishes with a West Coast twist” which sounds very appealing to me. They have a very rich breakfast menu! So it was kind of hard to choose what to eat. I was feeling like having an omelette so I’ve got the Parma omelette which has Prosciutto ham, fresh spinach and feta cheese. It was very delicious! By the way, you can always choose your own ingredients for your omelette.

Urban Eatery is a very nice and cozy place which is smaller than I was expecting. As you can guess, it had a European style and design. I miss my days in Italy so that was very nice for me.

After having my delicious omelette I had a latte, and I was energized and ready to continue my day! Also, I noticed that they have an enticing lunch menu, so I am thinking of visiting that place again for lunch next time.

I have tracked my phone usage throughout the Spring term. While I was tracking it I used the tracking app called Moment. Moment is an app that constantly tracks your phone usage and saves the detailed information for every day. So, you can go back and check your phone usage for specific dates. Also, it is an app that is designed to reduce the time that we spend on our phone. So you can set some limits for yourself in terms of spending less time on your phone. You do not have to do anything for the app to track your phone usage. It works in the background constantly, therefore you do not have to initiate or finish the tracking process. It will be just sending you alerts or notifications if you are exceeding the limits that you have set. Personally, I haven’t done it, I have only used the app to track my phone usage. But realizing how much time we spend on our phone often comes as a surprise, as it is a lot.

Usually, I notice that I spend about 4 hours and 20 minutes on my phone. I can say that it can be seen as the average amount of time. But it depends on my daily activities, for instance, when I work I cannot check my phone for almost 8 hours. That’s why I end up spending 1hours and 30 minutes on my phone

Also, if I spend all my day at home, I realize that I spend almost 8 hours on my phone which can be seen as excessive. By the way, when the amount of time that you spend on your phone is designated with red colour, it means that you use it excessively. The green colour signifies the reasonable amount of time and it is seen healthy. On the other hand, yellow means that it is not excessive nor ideal.
Even though I was not really planning on reducing my phone usage, seeing this results made me think about the time that I dedicate to my phone. I think that I spend significant amount of time on my phone which can be used for better purposes. In that sense, I am trying to use my phone less by spending less time on Instagram or Facebook. Instagram and Facebook are the social media applications that I use very frequently. On the other hand, I spend a reasonable amount of time on Whatsapp while I communicate my friends which means that most of the time that I spare to my phone are not essential.

I think I will continue on tracking my phone usage and I will try to decrease it as much as I can. I have not really notice that I spend so much time on my phone until I tracked it. Time is very valuable and it should be used for the best purposes.

I actually don’t want monetize the site, it will be a lot of pressure to operate a profitable website.

First of all, I’ll explain what I will do if I’m going to monetize the site. If I want to monetize the site, the first thing I’ll do is probably use Google AdSense to implement some advertisement, since this is the most easy way for the website to cooperate with advertisement. Then I think I’ll post more contents that can attract readers, especially contents that most of the online readers looking forward. This behavior will be done to increase the readers and also increase the clicking rate, thus to increase the profit from advertisement. I might not only post my ideas, but also post popular ideas that came from other people. Create more public topics to rise people’s interests, do something more to entertain the viewers. And also do better design of the page.

However I don’t very want to monetize this blog. The original goal for me to create this blog is not for money, it is for me. It’s my own platform to express my personal opinions. And I don’t have enough time to make it a profitable blog, since it will need effort to attract much more readers. What’s more, it’s not easy to make many profit on the website. Sometimes, the effort you pay cannot get the same amount profit you gain. This maybe just a chance for me to get to know more about online publication, and I need more experiences to operate an attractive blog.

I want to add the community guidelines for this blog. Not only to protect myself from personal attack online, but also to protect people who leave comments and willing to share information and opinions. This blog is an online space provided to people who love movies, at the same time comments are welcomed. However, in order to create a healthy and positive internet environment, community guidelines are needed. Here’s the community guidelines for this blog.

Every member should respect each other, get along well with other members, and please respect other people’s achievements, ask the author’s permission before share the idea.

Any of the following behaviors will not be tolerated, and comments will be deleted.

Any form of insult, defamation of character and encroach upon other person’s rights and benefits.

Rumours that inconsistent with the facts, instigate a crime, disturb the social order, comments that want to divide a country, and comments that violate the national law.

Before this spring in 2017, I never imagined I could do my own online publication. Publication has been quite an abstract form for me, and I had always believe that this process would probably involve many different professional people with abilities of typing, editing and printing. The most important part I can imagine is printing. However, the fact exceeded my imagination that I created my own online publication and able to let people from all over the world to access it without printing. At the same time, I learned a lot of skills and gained experiences of online publishing.

At the beginning, I didn’t know that to build a blog is also the way of publication. Blog creation becomes a fashion that started more than ten years ago, I can still remember that I built my own blog when I was in middle school. what’s more, people who create very popular blogs can even gain lots of earnings which is quite similar to the popular instagramers. For the website I created this time, I started with registered the domain name, and at the same time, make decision of the subject of the website and this teaches me a lesson. Since my domain name is “yunkecpub” which involves yunke that is my name and pub refer to publication, but the subject of the website is movie and film review which took me two weeks to finally make the decision and has no connection with the domain name. I believe this could be one of the reason why this website don’t attract much audiences, it’s better for the domain name to register after setting up the subject of the website.

There are two important tools I learned about online publication, they are Google Analytics and Google AdSense. These are the new technology that I didn’t have any knowledge before. And I was very surprised by the function and convenience of them. It’s very easy to install both tools, just by registering and adding both tools on the administration page of the website, they can be used for free. For the Google Analytics, it’s a tool that can monitor the viewers of your website, and summarize statistics about what devices the viewers were using, where were they, what language were they using, when did they view the website and more. This is very helpful when people want to make adjustment of their website and want to check their actual readers. The Google AdSense is a tool that can implement advertisements on your website, and it can help you earn money automatically. Although not every website can earn lots of money when this depend the click rate and flow rate of the website, it gave me an idea of how to cooperate advertisement sponsors with online publication.

Since the subject of my website is movies and film reviews, I was actually inspired by a Chinese website which allow many people to leave movie reviews and book reviews. This website has a name—–Douban, it is a big website involving information about music, movies, books and so on. When I want to know more information about the movie, especially when I want to know other people’s opinion of the movie, I sometimes check this website. By reading film reviews online, I can get more ideas about the stories and the logics that I don’t understand. This is why I want to create a website that post my blogs and film reviews.

For my imagined public, I expected they are readers who love to watch movies, who interested in movies that comes out recently, and who love to share views of movies. Nevertheless, in the earlier stage of the website creation, the most of my actual publics are my friends, classmates, instructor and people who accidently dropped in. There are some more expected readers gained later when I have more and more information on the website. By checking the Google Analytics, something surprised me that my readers are from all over the world, viewers came from countries include Canada, Malaysia, Brazil, Egypt, the United States and so on. However, there are still fewer viewers of my website than I expected.

For the appearance of this blog, I choose dark color as the background. This background can leaves viewers an impression like watching a movie. And I used one of the famous fantasy movie picture as the head image of the blog, especially when the expressions of the characters on the image are quite catching, lead people’s interest into the blog. For the content of the blog, I’ve post four film reviews from the movies I watched during this season. There are all coming out recently. I think I’ve providing a resource for people to get to know something about the new movies and at the same time, know something about me and about my personal views.

After created this website and learned skills of building up online publication for this term, publication became a much more solid idea for me. Publication is not just only the form of printing, it’s now also digitalized and integrated in every individuals’ life. I would continue work for my online publication, not only to attract readers but also to gain more online publishing experiences in order to correspond to the current trend.

Reference

豆瓣. (n.d.). Retrieved April 07, 2017, from https://www.douban.com/

F. (2012, September 07). On Self-Publishing and Amazon. Retrieved April 07, 2017, from http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/31026577075/on-self-publishing-and-amazon

No use of hate speech. This will not be tolerated under any circumstances. You are entitled to your own opinion, however there is a line between voicing your opinion and degrading others. This includes, but is not limited to, comments that degrade others’ race, religion, gender, orientation, or work. No unapproved self-promotion. Unsolicited forms of advertisement is not permitted...

Transmedia storytelling, from my understanding, is a transition of content into other forms and platforms of media. A great example that this reading explored was Pokemon, which was a franchise that spread onto videogames, card games, TV Shows, and books. In turn, these kinds of transitions result in interactivity with the audience since “it provides a set of...

I actually have the idea of creating the ‘community’ in my site at the beginning. Because my blog is about the movie, so the whole would seem more active with others comments. As I have followed Jason’s movie blog at the beginning, and I really like the way he treats the comments. So I would have some basic guidelines to ban the offense behavior, for example:

Do not comment anything insulting, abusive and irrelevant content

Please accept others have different opinions with you

But most importantly, I want to create a sharing place for people to give their thoughts of the movies. So I would create a new category called guests’ movie review. And I would encourage people to post their review and allow me to post it in my blog. I believe it would be a good way to active my site.